This book analyses the many facets-psychological, epistemological, metaphysical-of the repeated philosophical adventures over centuries to explore and explain the indubitability of I-consciousness. While the major focus is on the Upanisadic and the Buddhist traditions, this volume also examines Western philosophical traditions in a cross-cultural philosophical context.

Theological anthropology has tended to view human flourishing as consisting in the loving communion of ourselveswith God. Recently, Natalia Marandiuc has brought the tools of attachment theory to theological anthropology to argue that a self is not inherent to human persons but rather is co-created through our loving relationships with one another and with God. In this paper I argue for the introduction of narrative, particularly as understood through the work of Eleonore Stump, to Marandiuc’s account as a practical means (...) by which healing love might be communicated, particularly through Scriptural narratives. In evidence of narrative’s usefulness, I offer a brief exegesis of the Gospel of John’s account of the Woman at the well. This synthesis fills a gap in our understanding of the self’s flourishing by not only adopting a model demonstrating its emergence but also by providing a method by which the model can be applied. (shrink)

Response to commentaries on keynote article.

Because there is no agreed use of the term 'self', or characteristic features or even paradigm cases of selves, there is no idea of "the self" to figure in philosophical problems. The term leads to troubles otherwise avoidable; and because legitimate discussions under the heading of 'self' are really about other things, it is gratuitous. I propose that we stop speaking of selves.

In his book Individuals P. F. Strawson writes that ‘both the Cartesian and the no-ownership theorists are profoundly wrong in holding, as each must, that there are two uses of ‘I’, in one of which it denotes something which it does not denote in the other’ . I think, by contrast, that there is a defensible ‘Cartesian materialist’ sense, which Strawson need not reject, in which I can and does denote two different things, and which is nothing like the flawed (...) Wittgensteinian distinction between the use of I ‘as object’ and the use of I ‘as subject’. I don’t argue directly for the ‘two uses’ view, however. Instead I do some preparatory work. First I criticize one bad argument for the ‘only one use of I’ view. Then I offer a phenomenological description of our everyday experience of ourselves that leads to an attack on ‘corporism’—the excessive focus on the body in present-day analytic philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Normal 0 21 false false false ES-CO X-NONE X-NONE Este ensayo busca mostrar la relevancia de la perspectiva de la primera persona a través de un enfoque fenomenológico. Frente a la negativa de las distintas tendencias de la filosofía de la mente analítica, las ciencias cognitivas y las neurociencias de considerar la realidad de los estados mentales como fenómenos subjetivos, se esboza una revisión de la cuestión con la finalidad de señalar la relación entre la experiencia subjetiva y una ontología (...) de la primera persona. Normal 0 21 false false false ES X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4. (shrink)